Albania’s prime minister, Edi Rama, looks to have sailed to victory in general elections after a near-complete vote count showed voters had returned him to power for an unprecedented fourth term.
With 94% of the ballots counted, Rama’s party was leading the leftwing Socialists to a resounding win over Sali Berisha’s centre-right Democratic party in a poll viewed as pivotal for the Balkan country’s attempt to join the EU.
The incumbent party had garnered 52% of the vote compared with 34% for its main opposition rival, official figures from the election commission showed, although international observers questioned the fairness of the poll.
Preliminary turnout in Sunday’s election was almost 42.16%, or 4% lower than four years ago. The state election commission is due to announce full results on Tuesday.
“It’s a result exceeding all expectations even before the ballots have been fully counted,” said a well-placed source in Tirana. “A fourth consecutive win is phenomenal. Edi has cause to be very happy.”
In office since 2013, Rama had campaigned on his ability to fast-track reforms deemed vital for the ex-communist state to accede to the EU. The 60-year-old has promised to deliver membership within five years after formally opening accession negotiations last October.
The goal, seen by many as highly ambitious, has been aided by the desire of some European leaders to see Albania and other western Balkan states join the bloc following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The country’s first president after the fall of communism more than three decades ago, Berisha, 80, argued Albania was far from ready for EU admission. Once the personal physician of the late Stalinist dictator Enver Hoxha, the cardiologist had run a US-style campaign overseen by consultants brought in from Washington DC, including Chris LaCivita, the Republican strategist credited with helping secure Donald Trump’s victory in November. Berisha had made his campaign motto “Make Albania Great Again”.
The Democratic party had joined forces with 20 other political groups in the hope of removing Rama from office. But by early on Monday, as ballots were counted by hand, it was clear the Socialists were in the ascendancy.
An international election monitoring mission led by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe said, however, there had been a “misuse of public resources and institutional power by the ruling party” in the campaign. It said there were “numerous reports of pressure on public employees and other voters as well as cases of intimidation.”
The government did not immediately respond to a request for comment on that.
Analysts said the Socialist party appeared to have won backing from overseas voters after Albania’s large expatriate community was allowed to cast ballots by post for the first time. More than 192,000 votes were received from the nearly 246,000 Albanians who had registered to vote abroad before Sunday’s election in the 2.7 million-strong nation.
An overwhelming 83% of Albanians support EU membership, the highest endorsement of any population in the western Balkans, according to a Eurobarometer survey released in November.
Rama, who served as mayor of Tirana before going into mainstream politics – livening up the capital’s drab cityscape by having its communist-era buildings painted in an array of colours – has made the country’s EU accession a priority. Supporters attending his weekly rallies turned the quest into a hallmark by donning white T-shirts emblazoned with a large multicoloured “5” – indicating the years left until 2030.
The promise of EU membership was a big draw for diaspora voters, said Albania’s ambassador to Greece, Luela Hajdaraga.
“Albanians living abroad were very eager to participate in this historic process and have their voices heard,” she told the Guardian. “In Greece, especially, where the issue of gaining citizenship has been so difficult, the prospect of Albania joining the EU is seen very positively.”
Rama has said that Albania, for decades the continent’s most isolated state, is “at the gates of Europe”. The country has opened 16 of the 35 negotiating chapters for membership of the bloc. But in a land blighted by corruption and organised crime, he also faces challenges, not least mass emigration as young Albanians seek better lives abroad.
